Keep your eyes on the prize

Maintaining one's vision of the final product leads to success

The house in Melbourne in the Eastern Townships is surrounded by two hectares of rolling land. A stunning 4,571-sq-foot home on four floors with 17 rooms, it has an in-ground swimming pool.

Photograph by: Helga Loverseed
, The Gazette

In the 1980s, Pierre Gervais and his wife, Louise Bourgault, were living in Montreal, but they longed for a house in the country. When their work brought them to the Eastern Townships - Gervais is a pharmacologist, Bourgault is a consultant in health ethics - they were able to find the kind of place they were dreaming of, only 20 minutes from their jobs in Sherbrooke.

The house, situated in Melbourne, was constructed in 1903 and it hadn't known many owners. The property had once encompassed 405 hectares, acquired by one Colonel Frank who, before Confederation, served in the British Army. One of Frank's descendants lived in the house her entire life (the road on which it stands is still called Chemin Frank), but by the time Gervais and Bourgault came along, the property had changed hands and much of the land had been sold off. The lot had dwindled to 25 hectares, but the house had potential, so the couple snapped it up and set about whipping it into shape.

According to Gervais, at the time, they probably didn't realize just how much they were taking on.

"We did know that renovating the house wasn't going to be easy. It was in pretty rough shape. The roof was leaking and in one corner of the dining room there was a large hole covered with a piece of plywood, to stop the squirrels coming in. The room that is now the solarium was falling apart. Weeds were pushing up through the floor. Plants like to grow and these ones were certainly growing!

"We soon discovered that when you're renovating, there are two things that typically happen," he said. "The first is that the construction goes according to plan. The other is the 'oops' factor. I'm afraid we had rather a lot of the oops factor."

Gervais recalled that his father-in-law was appalled by the state of the building but said he was "nice enough" not to dissuade them from going ahead with the purchase. Gervais and Bourgault, for their part, were visualizing what the country house could become.

Their vision has certainly paid off. The house today, now surrounded by two hectares of rolling land (the rest was sold off), is a stunning, 4,571-square-foot home on four flours with 17 rooms and an in-ground swimming pool. There are four bedrooms and three bathrooms. The basement boasts a wine cellar.

Seven of the rooms are on the main floor. They include a library/home office, an open-plan kitchen, a dining room and a cozy den with a wood-burning fireplace. Also on the main floor is the solarium, where the family gathers to watch television, read or play games. According to Gervais, it's everybody's favourite place to hang out. One entire wall is filled with DVDs. Another is lined with books. A bay window, which stretches almost from the ceiling to the floor, looks out over the garden.

The décor was largely the choice of Bourgault, who clearly has an artistic eye. The entire house is a symphony of colours and textures and her touches are evident throughout. The solarium, for example, has a charcoal-coloured slate floor, which sets off the mustard armchairs. In the dining room, hardwood floors echo the wood trim around the windows and doors. The walls of the den are painted an eye-catching lime green, tempered by a chocolate-coloured leather sofa and the bricks of the fireplace.

"Louise is very creative," Gervais said. "This was the kind of house she was dreaming about and she could see its potential right away."

The couple, who hired contractors to help them, were working within a limited budget, so they decided to tackle the house, room by room, year by year.

"We quickly found out that our estimate of what things would cost, inevitably fell short of the final amount. That was one of the 'oops' factors. Our rule of thumb became to work out a price and then multiply by 1.5 in the hope that would be more or less accurate.

"The other 'oops' factor was of course thinking that a job would be quite simple, then finding out that it wasn't. Each time we touched a room, we found we had to tear everything down. There were multiple challenges. We had to redo the insulation, put in new windows, demolish walls, construct a chimney, open up the basement - everything!"

Gervais recalled that one of the most unexpected challenges was finding out an entire corner of the house was rotten - something that was revealed only when an inside wall was being taken down. Fifteen thousand dollars later, with two men working flat out for a week and a half while the corner was open to the elements, it was replaced.

The other major challenge was revamping the kitchen.

"The kitchen was tiny and it was so badly insulated that each time the wind blew, it actually ruffled Louise's hair!" Gervais said.

The couple wanted the kitchen to be big enough to entertain close friends, as well as to prepare food. (The dining room, furnished with antiques and original artwork, is their more formal entertaining area.) A balcony and a tiny window were demolished and replaced by an extension to the building.

The new kitchen has a long work area with a row of off-white cabinets, glass-fronted cupboards and a stainless steel sink. Above the sink is a picture window overlooking the surrounding countryside. Opposite the work area is a breakfast bar and at the far end, a pantry. At the opposite end of the kitchen is the dining area, which has a white table with a pine surface and matching white Windsor chairs. The floor is covered with smart black and white tiles.

The walls are painted a pale primrose, which, along with the white wood, reflect the light from the surrounding windows and a multi-paned French door that leads to a patio.

"We love to sit outside and just enjoy the scenery," Gervais said. "Sometimes we're lucky enough to see the animals that live around us. We've spotted deer, wild turkeys and even a family of foxes with their young - one of the joys of living in the country."

Gervais and Bourgault have recently decided, with regret, to put their house up for sale. Louise is being plagued with arthritis, which makes it increasingly difficult for her to negotiate their four floors of living space. The couple, who still work in Sherbrooke, intend to stay in the area and are on the lookout for another country home within reach of the city. Their house is listed at $695,000.

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